


Cisco Ramon

by wordswehavesaid



Series: Queer Headcanons [5]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Trans Male Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 08:43:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6747070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswehavesaid/pseuds/wordswehavesaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conceptualization of the character as a transgender man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cisco Ramon

**Author's Note:**

> And another installment in the series where I imagine characters from various fandoms as queer, whether in identity or sexuality. This one, as some of you may know, draws on a lot of inspiration from my own experience as a trans man, so I really hope you all enjoy!  
> *Sidenote: wrote this before the latest episode, so I don't know if anything Cisco and Dante talked about contradicts anything in here, but if so I'm sorry in advance!

Cisco was born Francesca Ramon to parents who would never understand him. He spurned the restrictive dresses he was forced into whenever guests were over or their family went to mass, tugged his hair out of the intricate braids or pigtails his Mama would tie them into, and took his dolls apart to build new toys or spent his allowance on action figures from the comic books Dante didn’t read anymore.

He learned to resent Dante from an early age, because Dante was everything Francesca wasn’t; tall and talented, the pride of their parents, and most importantly he wasn’t a  _niñita_ like everyone said Francesca was.

His parents didn’t want to hear his complaints or his repeated insistence as he grew older that something was wrong, that he didn’t feel right like this, didn’t look right. God didn’t make mistakes, was what they told him. So Francesca turned to science.

He loved engineering because it allowed him to take things apart, find out how they worked, and _fix_ them. Maybe science could fix people, too. He researches the treatments and surgeries and memorizes every detail.

He skips grades in school because there’s nothing worse than all the teasing, the jeering from other boys and the way the girls turn their noses up at him for being so _different_. In gym he blushes and tries to keep his eyes on the floor while changing in the girl’s locker room, and often just skips or fakes being sick to go to the nurse. It’s the one class he flunks every year. It’s not as bad as the time he gets drunk at one of the only parties he goes to and tries to kiss his crush, and she screams at him to get out of her face, “I’m not a lesbian!” Neither is he, he wants to say, but he’s pretty quick to get over her after that. 

By the time he’s eighteen he’s already in college and has a work study that he uses to pay for hormones instead of tuition. It’s fine, he’s got a scholarship that’s practically a full ride anyway. But his parents are still furious.

Not as furious as when he officially gets his name changed, even though he takes them into consideration: Francisco. It seems appropriate, after all, that’s who he’s always been. Their second son, not their daughter.

Dante calls him “little brother” now when he comes home on break, but it’s in his usual mocking tone. Once, while he’s at his workbench, his older brother startles him, yanking on a strand of hair tucked behind his ear. “And when are you going to get this cut? Look like a real man, _Cisco_.”

“Don’t be a dick, Dante, guys have long hair too.” He hates the expectation from some of his relatives - the ones that are still talking to him, anyway -that he now has something to _prove_. He hates even more how he feels like he does, too.

Landing the job at STAR labs, it’s a dream come true for many reasons, especially because it feels like something of a fresh start. Dr. Wells doesn’t pause or ask about the previous legal names section of his application, but by the second week everyone knows since Hartley found out during a “review” of his work and background. Ronnie Raymond tells the second-in-command at STAR that “Considering what your parents did to you, you should maybe have some compassion for once in your life.” Dr. Caitlin Snow invites him for drinks and tries to help him pick out a girl to chat up at the bar but ends up so drunk they just call her fiance for a ride and he’s at least found himself some friends.

And then everything at the labs with the particle accelerator goes to shit and Ronnie is gone. But nine months later he meets the blessedly clean slate that is Barry Allen. Barry never comments on his girly screams or his long hair or his sweet tooth or all the things Cisco has learned to fear as his “give-aways”. Instead he calls him “dude” like it’s his second name, talks with him about anything from movies to girls without any sort of hesitance or worrying about making him uncomfortable, and this feels exactly like what he’s been searching for all his life. Someone who looks at him and only sees Cisco. 

He wonders, sometimes, if he should tell Barry, his best friend. And yet at the same time it’s not like he’s lying to the other man. He’s a dude, plain and simple, and well, if his past ever does come up, he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it. Barry’s forgiven him for so much more than this before, he’d have to be okay with this, Cisco tells himself, even as he berates himself a second later in his head because there’s nothing to forgive. They’re both just guys trying to live their lives.

Barry brings Joe and Iris and Felicity and Oliver and Diggle and everyone into his life too, and with each new person, each new friend who so easily accepts him as he is Cisco feels something ease within him. It feels less like an act he’s putting on to try and convince them all and more like just…living. The casual use of his _name_ and the _pronouns_ and even when he’s just lumped in with the _other guys_ , all of it has him grinning widely and wanting to pump a fist in excitement and victory because _he’s finally fixed what was wrong_.

So he doesn’t know how to handle it when Barry and the others are all discussing changing the timeline, reversing the Reverse’s effects on their lives. Sure a lot of great things would come from it, but what about the bad? Barry never becomes the Flash, never comes to STAR labs, maybe Cisco’s never even hired there and he never knows Caitlin or Barry. He doesn’t know what to do if he loses that. And he knows it’s so selfish the relief he feels when Barry returns from the past, history unchanged.

But can he help it when now, finally, he’s truly started to love his life?


End file.
